During my years of coaching voice, I’ve worked with countless clients that had vocal issues. Or more simply, they aimed to “fix” or “address” a vocal impediment.
So in the moment of commencement, even just beginning to work on the voice, more often than not there was damage –– patently noticeable, implicit, or even subconscious –– and it was a challenge to apply the necessary exercises.
On a personal and professional level, I of course would never want to push past any pain or discomfort, so the essential concept of vocal rest and silence had to come first.
Even more, vocal rest and silence became the necessary pivot points for active progress and improvement.
This may have seemed frustrating at first, especially for those looking for an explicit “solution,” but it ultimately became a truly profound experience…
Because it expressed the solution as a process, as a way of processing the needs and requirements of vocal rest in order to develop vocal confidence.
So often we “over-talk,” we “over-explain,” and we speak unconsciously and seemingly ineffectively.
But it’s precisely by investing time in truly listening to our body –– and to the expressions of others, sometimes even implicit –– that deepens us. Even more so, it makes us aware of the vocal development itself, that it’s a process, that it’s based on internal adjustment as much as external application.
I witnessed these realizations so much, so vividly, that I began to recommend the very same practice to the most capable artists who didn’t have any issues whatsoever.
Choosing to spend hours (or even a few days) to actively pursue this practice slows down the nervous system and aligns an inner voice. Vocal silence became so effective and perceptive that when these actors began to speak there was resonance, power, and even implication to their words.
It places one in a more receptive and perceptive mode, and therefore opens and expands all the other senses. By expanding one sense, the perpetual voice, it actually develops deeper connections with every sense, and therefore every sense’s infinite potential.
This process is so essential, expansive, and emboldening for artists –– for those who yearn to utilize their natural abilities as infinite talent –– that it actually has a lasting effect on your following engagements.
Give it a try! Give it a go! Give it a chance to reveal your capability to communicate!
